


Dear Desi

by goresmores



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Fluff, Hurt and comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 02:39:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7600255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goresmores/pseuds/goresmores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What could be more exciting than the start of a family? What could be more crushing than the abrupt end of it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Desi

**Author's Note:**

> GUESS WHOSE BACK
> 
> WITH ANGST
> 
> also, i made the baby have they/them pronouns bc i dont wanna dictate a sex or gender. fill it in w/ whatever you want!

He was doing it again.

Lance was staring at the crib.

He was always staring at it. 

He hadn’t stopped staring at it since the baby died. He just sat there, hands interlocked under his chin, looking at the rustled baby blanket that decorated the crib along with a couple of stuffed animals that had once made it comfy for their child. 

The look on Lance’s face broke Keith’s heart more than the death of their child did at this point. 

Before, Lance was constantly smiling. Different smiles, all the time. The smiles that went into everything before he even got to see the baby. His gentle, fatherly smile when he held Desi for the first time after the two of them finally got to adopt them. Lance’s smile when, with tears in his eyes, he looked at Keith and said, “I want to name them Desi.” How he sobbed tears of joy, holding their newest addition to the family and told Keith that the name Desi meant “desired”. But now his eyebrows were knit in pain, he was focused so intently on the empty crib and Keith didn’t understand why. 

Keith remembered how he almost cried when Lance told him what he wanted to name the baby and what it meant, because Lance had been so excited, but anxious and fired up, but so, so _happy_ when the two of them applied for adoption. 

He started planning everything so quickly, insisting that preparation was everything for a baby. 

So he started decorating the room, picking colors and buying toys and baby clothes. He started a list of names, but it was obvious he didn’t want to commit to one yet. He asked for Keith’s input on things, and Keith helped, even though he had his own anxiety about becoming a father. 

One night, Lance pulled him down onto the carpet of the baby room floor and asked him if he was okay. Keith told him the truth. And Lance told him, “C’mon, Keith. If it’s me and you together, you got nothin’ to worry about. We’ll be the unstoppable daddy duo!” But Lance’s dorky phrasing did the trick, and Keith laughed, rolling over to nuzzle his husband’s neck with a big smile plastered on his face. Lance looked so overwhelmed with joy in that moment. He nuzzles Keith back and kissed his head. “We’re gonna be great parents. Just wait and see.” 

Somehow, even though he was this close to Lance, close enough to be married and be adopting a kid together, Keith felt like he was facing the world alone sometimes… but he had Lance to remind him that he wasn’t. That he didn’t just have Lance, but Pidge and Hunk and even Shiro. 

But now, he felt alone again. The warmth of a family was gone, just like Desi, and just like Lance’s smile. And now, Lance wasn’t there for him. He wasn’t there to tell Keith that they’d feel better soon, or that it wasn’t their fault. 

Lance didn’t come to bed anymore. He just sat there, staring at the crib. He barely ate. Keith had to bring him food and urge him to eat, because if he didn’t, Lance wouldn’t eat and would just go hungry. His urging never earned much of a response from his husband aside from a hand, irritated, picking up the spoon and shoving it in his mouth. It had to hurt. It looked like it hurt, the way he jammed it in. Keith would stand in the doorway and hear the audible noises his husband’s stomach was making. It hurt. The only time Lance ever slept was when he passed out, physically unable to stay away anymore, and Keith would carry him to bed, only to find Lance back at the crib as soon as he woke up. 

Sometime Lance would get up in the middle of the night, and Keith, insomnia unfortunately alive and well, would be able to hear him run to the restroom and throw up whatever he had managed to get Lance to eat that day. He didn’t understand it. 

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Yeah… I’m… I’m fine.” And then Lance would pull the covers up over his head and go back to sleep. 

 

On another occasion, Keith was awake to see Lance jolt to consciousness, a worried whisper of “Desi!” on his lips before he’d spring out the bed and obviously to nursery room. 

Keith got out of bed and went to the nursery. He stopped just before the doorway when he heard Lance sobbing. 

He closed his eyes, forcing back tears, swallowing down his cowardice to take a step into the room. 

And with open eyes, Keith had to witness his Lance on his knees, fucking bawling in front of the empty crib. 

“Empty… it’s always empty, Keith.” He thought they would be there this time. Thought he’d heard their cry. But it was empty. Empty just like everything else right now.

And that was the first time Keith couldn’t do it anymore. He’d loved Desi, he really had. But not as much as Lance. When Keith found them dead, Keith didn’t cry. He only panicked. Panicked because he had to deliver the news to Lance. Panicked because he knew Lance wasn’t going to be okay once he found out. Panicked because there wasn’t some magical way to revive a dead baby. No way to shield the love of your life some hurt as impossibly big as this. 

The tears spilled over and Keith was crying. Crying for the first time since all of this happened. His feet carried him forward and he wrapped his arms around Lance. Lance reciprocated and they sat on the floor, crying in each other’s arms, and despite how awful the situation was, it felt like that was how it was meant to be. 

 

One day, Keith woke up when he heard and felt the rustling sheets. His eyes opened just enough to see Lance getting out of bed and Keith grabbed his wrist, desperate. 

“Keith.” 

“Lance.” He paused. His sleep muddled brain was late to registering the warning tone in Lance’s voice when he said his name. “Lance, stay in bed.” 

Keith said that. Spoke it from the heart. Might have cried, even, if tears came easy to him. But this was the best he could think to do. And all he got in return was silence. 

“Do you feel alone?” 

More silence. 

“You don’t talk to me anymore. You won’t stop staring at the crib, playing with the toys. You won’t come to bed anymore, you don’t eat much. Your boss called yesterday to ask when you’re coming back to work. Compassionate Leave requires contact, Lance. And how are you gonna stay in contact with your boss if you can’t even stay in contact with me?” 

Even more silence. The house was so quiet all the time it was driving Keith crazy. Quiet helped when he wanted to think, but Keith was tired of thinking. He wanted to drown in Lance and his mind-numbing stupidity, inhale the scent that drove him crazy and get caught up in a kiss that might help him remember the happiness from before. 

Normally when things went wrong, Lance played them off, acted like nothing was wrong. And maybe this was better than acting like nothing was wrong, but this hurt even more than that. 

At least when he played it off Keith could talk to him and knew that thing would be okay eventually. But when Lance let himself get so absorbed in his pain like this, Keith didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t really one to initiate— that was Lance. But now it was almost like there wasn’t a Lance. Just two Keiths, and they were having a hell of a hard time getting better without their Lance. 

It felt awful to do this to him when he was grieving, but something in Keith couldn’t hold back anymore and he poured out the rest of what he had. “I’m trying to be here, Lance. But it’s hard when I’m not sure you need me as much as I need you right now.” 

And at that, Lance’s body slumped forward. 

He spoke, but it was quiet. A simple “I’m sorry.” It was pained. Sounded like it was forced out. 

Lance turned around and that’s when Keith finally got to see his tears. 

“It feels like it’s all my fault.” _No no no, it wasn’t your fault._ “I looked it up, you know. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.” _God, no._ “Like, maybe, just _maybe_ if they had slept in here with us then they wouldn’t have died. Maybe if I hadn’t left stuffed animals in there they could breathed better.” Lance let out an ugly laugh. It was sarcastic and full of rage, but also uncomfortably broken sounding. 

“I tried to tell myself that maybe it was because they were underweight when they were born, but… but if that’s the case then I don’t think I helped. I’m so _stupid_.” 

Keith’s hand loosened from around Lance’s wrist and he grabbed his hand. “Lance, no, you’re not—” 

He was angry. “I did all this shit to prepare for them and then I… I didn’t even look into proper crib stuff!” 

_“Lance,—”_

“ _Keith,_ I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t think you’re right. There aren’t as many explanations as you’d think.” When he said it, Lance’s expression became impossibly more broken and he squeezed Keith’s hand. 

Keith squeezed even harder. “Please listen to me. Because you keep cutting me off and for once I have more to say than you’d think.” He looked at Lance, who winced at how hard Keith was squeezing, causing him to correct his grip. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be.” 

“That’s what I mean, Lance. I squeezed your hand and you’re telling me not to be sorry, but of course I’m going to be sorry. I hurt someone I love. And even if you tell me not to be sorry, it still hurt you, and sometimes I’ll hurt you and you won’t always forgive me right away, but the point is, eventually, you’ll forgive me. Which is great, because you need to learn to forgive yourself. Desi died and _maybe_ you had something to do with it, but only _maybe_. I _for sure_ hurt your hand when I squeezed it hard. Hunk’s a lawyer, don’t tell me you’ve never heard the words ‘extenuating circumstances’ at least once by now. And that’s exactly what I mean. You need to talk to someone besides me or even yourself. You have to stop staring at the crib and start taking care of yourself again or else you’re never going to get better. You’re gonna wallow in self-pity and blame yourself forever. Pick up your phone, call Hunkand talk to him until you feel better.” Keith raised Lance’s hand to his mouth and he kissed nearly every inch of it. “When emotions are failing you, logical reason can help. It’s like anxiety. You can worry about the worst and get caught up in that, or you can reason the worst-case scenario, the best-case scenario and what, besides those two, are going to happen.” 

He finished by pulling Lance into a hug. It was awkward since he had been sitting on the edge and it was probably uncomfortable, but probably couldn’t be a worse position than whatever emotional pain he was going through right now.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk that much the entire time we were dating.” Lance sounded amazed and kind of shocked. 

“Yeah, well, you needed it. And there’s a reason. It’s because it’s exhausting.” Keith kissed his forehead and then his lips before collapsing back onto his pillows. “Come back to bed and sleep some more. You need it. And when we wake up, we’ll eat—” he checked his watch “lunch— and then we’ll call up Hunk and see if he has any of his legal stuff that can help you stop blaming yourself.” 

Lance didn’t agree with words, but with action, crawling back under the covers and settling in next to Keith. “I bet he does. He’s like a copy machine. He read a legal file and made like, a weird mental copy or something. He could recite it word for word. I sat in on one of his cases. I didn’t know he was reciting word for word, of course, but Pidge is his assistant and they knew. I’m pretty sure he has eidetic memory, based off that. And then well, in high school. He was the same way.”

“Are you just showing off when you call it eidetic? You could easily just call it photographic memory.” 

“Uhm, obviously if I know what the term for it is then I’m gonna call it that. It’s eidetic, but,” he assisted himself with air-quotes, “‘sometimes called photographic memory.’ Why would I want to fit into a ‘sometimes’ category, Keith?” 

Keith chuckled and rolled his eyes, rolling over to shut Lance up with a kiss. 

His eyes were still shiny from his tears, but Lance smiled at him, and it lit up Keith’s dark world in an instant. He could light up the darkest room with that smile. 

“I missed this. I missed this so much.” Keith buried his face in Lance’s neck, breathing his scent. 

“Whoa, you’re really breathing in deep there, buddy.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Duly noted.” Lance smiled, though. Keith has asked if he’d felt alone, and he had. But in feeling alone, he forgot that he wasn’t, and that he wasn’t the only one feeling that way either. He ran his fingers through Keith’s hair, resting his face against the top of his husband’s head. This felt nice. It felt nice to let out everything he’d been keeping in and to be close to the one person that was going through this with him. 

For the longest while it felt like Keith didn’t actually care. Not until the time they cried together in the nursery. 

He would apologize, but Lance didn’t want to ruin the moment. 

“I love you, Keith. I love you so much.” 

He didn’t get an immediate response. It was quiet. Quiet enough to hear a bird twitter outside their bedroom window, before Keith said, “I love you too. More than I could ever tell you.” They shared a good, long, kiss on the lips and let their eyes fall closed, taking comfort in the presence of the other.

So, sure, Lance felt bad because he thought Keith didn’t care as much about Desi as he did. 

And sure, Keith really didn’t. He needed time to form attachments and three months with a baby that only really ever spent time crying and pooping and eating, aside from a few heartwarming giggles wasn’t enough time for him, but he cared. Cared enough to know that this was a big loss, and what this meant to Lance, even if Keith didn’t feel as strongly. 

It’d even take months for Lance to really recover enough to be considered okay again, but for now, it was alright, at least. They had each other and they could find solace in the fact they weren’t alone in this, and that one day, it _would_ get better. It wouldn’t be the same, but it’d at least be okay again. 

All they needed was time, hope and each other.


End file.
